


And the Stars Whisper Their Laments

by OrderOfRevan



Series: Order's Rogue Robin Collection [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Introspection, No Dialogue, callsign019, jedi order critical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 11:26:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10898388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrderOfRevan/pseuds/OrderOfRevan
Summary: Obi-Wan Kenobi listens to the voice of the Force and must come to grips with one of the Jedi Order's greatest crimes, not just against Anakin Skywalker, but against himself, as well.





	And the Stars Whisper Their Laments

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Her Name Tastes of Dead Ash](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10205744) by [saltandlimes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandlimes/pseuds/saltandlimes). 



> This work is not only inspired by the above story, but also by Broken in the Same Way, by magnetgirl.

The twin suns of Tatooine beat down on his back, bright and oppressive, as always. 

It felt like they were trying to punish him, to burn away the layers of dishonest underneath his worn Jedi Robes until he was laid completely bare and forced to face the truth. He would say he hated it, but he had grown too old to hate things with the fervor of a young man, and to suppress them all the same. 

Now, he was old, old and more aware of the ways in which his negative emotions could affect him. He knew that suppressing them made them worse, that the only way to really let them go was to meditate on them and give them up to the Force. 

It still didn’t stop him from thinking about them, though. 

In fact, on Tatooine there was little else to do but think about them. 

He whittled away long hours of the day when he wasn’t training in his abilities with the Force simply thinking about the state of the Galaxy and the Fall of the Republic and the Jedi Order for as far back as he could recall. 

He reached out to the Force, searching for answers, try to discern why  _ now _ , and why _ this _ , and why Anakin and Padme of all people? 

And most days, he received only static in response. 

But sometimes, sometimes in the still dead of the night, when he could see the entire Galaxy spread across the clear desert sky, could imagine worlds on which Vader searched for him, could imagine Alderaan, where Bail kept the girl, and Dagobah, where Master Yoda found his repose… 

Sometimes, he thought the Force reached back to him and gave him answers, whispered to him the truth that he didn’t want to believe… That he  _ couldn’t _ believe if he were going to keep himself sane. 

The history of the Galaxy had been told in tragic love stories, in doomed relationships, the pages of that great history book written in their blood and tears. It was told in star-crossed lovers, who strengthened one another even as they broke one another into pieces. 

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that fate tore them apart, and trying to hold was what destroyed them, piece by piece, until there was nothing left. 

They whispered to him from beyond the veil of death itself, in the vast expanse of the desert, where nothing particularly interesting ever happened. From hidden desert pools, they told him about their tears, and the wind wailed their triumph through canyons in bittersweet whistles and soft moans. 

And he could only listen, listen and pretend what they were saying wasn’t true. 

Because if what they were saying was true, then Qui-Gon and Tahl might have never been torn apart the way they were, their deeper emotions always hidden behind the guise of friendship. They could have had a happy life and still served the will of the Force, regardless of their attachments. 

If they were right Anakin and Padme could have received the support they had needed, and Padme would still be alive, the twins would have their parents and Anakin… 

Anakin wouldn’t be a machine, a Lord of the Sith, a hollow shell of the life and vibrancy he’d once possessed. 

If they were right… 

Obi-Wan wouldn’t have had to lose Satine. 

He couldn’t believe the whispers, or he couldn’t keep going on alone, each day blurring into the last until he wasn’t sure if he’d been here years or weeks, until time itself stopped making sense and he realized he no longer knew what he looked like. 

The only way to track the passage of time was through the boy he wasn’t allowed to see, the boy who he watched from afar every day, It was the only way to know that years had slid by on the blazing and unchanging Tatooine, leaving his face and hands worn like the stone and the sand, corroded by the wind until he was nothing more than a facsimile of himself. 

Until he was nothing more than a reflection in a pool, faded and grey, a hermit, an outcast, an outlaw… 

What would Satine think, if she could see him now? 

It was in his worst moments, when thinking about the passage of years, about how much time he’d spent underneath the twin suns that his mind strayed to other timelines, worlds in which it was okay for a Jedi to love. 

He pictured little children with reddish-blonde hair, with bright blue eyes and his smile, but Satine’s common sense and shrewdness.

He pictured Mandalore, at peace, Satine and Padme together forging a future for the Galaxy, pushing reforms in both the Republic and on Mandalore itself. 

He pictured himself and Anakin, both in jedi robes, Anakin trusted by the Council, Obi-Wan his closest friend making jokes, but proud of his Padawan nonetheless. They were guarding the peace Satine and Padme fought so hard for, and Obi-Wan couldn’t have been more happy. 

But it was only a dream, an impossible future, and no such world could ever exist, because attachments lead to the Dark Side, even though he knew in his heart of hearts that sometimes his love of Satine was the only thing stopping him from plummeting, from Falling into insanity and Darkness. Sometimes, she was the only bright star in the entire sky, the only thing tethering him to his reality, her goodness, her morality, motivating him to remain the man she’d loved even from beyond the grave. 

And he would think, in those quiet moments, by the light of a small lamp as he looked out his window at all the stars, “how can love possibly be evil?” 

There came a point when he accepted that it wasn’t, somewhere in the heat haze of the years. 

At some point, his soul started to harmonize with the spirits of countless lovers, separated by spans of stars, torn apart by Sith Empires, by imprisonment, by sinister whispers in the back of their mind. He came to understand their pain and their joy, came to reconcile what he’d been taught with the truth, the two disparate parts of himself finally at peace, their long conflict over after years of blaming himself for things he couldn’t have possibly controlled. 

Things he had been taught. 

Things he had internalized. 

He was among their number now, his soul singing the same lament, attuned to the same song the stars serenaded him with every night. 

The Jedi had been wrong. 

_ He _ had been wrong. 

In every breath he drew thinking of Satine, there was strength. 

She was the good parts of him, the parts that tended towards wisdom and grace, the kindest, most tender parts of him, the thing that reminded himself to treat himself himself kindly. 

He knew now that it wasn’t attachment that caused pain, that caused darkness, that had dragged Anakin to the Dark Side and held him there. 

Padme had seen the good in him, her words echoing in his mind at odd times, ringing out through his memory. He had no concrete answers on whether or not that good still existed. It hurt him too much to think about it, about the possibility that Anakin could be redeemed.

He knew that even if Anakin could be, he himself wouldn’t be the one to drag that back out, to cast away years of pain and hatred. 

What he did know is that Anakin Skywalker had been a slave to his own obsession, his obsession with peace, with freedom, with rescuing his loved ones, and that the people closest to him had never seen it. They had all blamed his tendency to grow close to others easily, his lack of self control, when under different circumstances, those same things might have kept him accountable, might have been his saving grace. 

The Jedi Order should have freed him.

Instead, they only shackled him further. 

Obi-Wan wondered, sometimes, what it would take to change the Galaxy, what role he would yet play, knowing that he would only realize for sure when the time came, just as he always did. 

He couldn’t know what ending all of this would come to, no man could. 

The future was always in motion.

But no matter what that future was, Obi-Wan at least had the sense that Anakin’s boy -- that Luke Skywalker -- was the answer, and that he himself wouldn’t live to see the conclusion of all this madness. 

Instead, he would see it from beyond the veil of death. 

The veil of death, where surely something of Satine was still waiting for him. 

Looking up at the stars once more, gazing out at the Galaxy, Obi-Wan Kenobi found he felt infinitely small and that the feeling, for once, brought with it peace. 


End file.
